Renaissance Impressions Dimensional Result
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' ( !"#$% &" ) ) * + , -. An Introduction to the Exhibition Introduction for Teachers and Students The woodcuts in this exhibition were produced during the sixteenth century, coinciding with the end of a remarkable period in the history of European art, known as the Renaissance. Beginning in the fourteenth century, new styles of painting, sculpture and architecture began to emerge. Inspired by the art of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as new scientific developments, artists worked to produce highly realistic images of the human body and of the natural world. The period culminated in Italy with the High Renaissance, a flowering of art that was embodied in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Written by Dr. Katie Faulkner To achieve a more naturalistic feel in painting, artists were experimenting with For the Learning Department new ways to use the effects of light and dark. (The Italian term chiaroscuro can be © Royal Academy of Arts translated into English as ‘light-dark’ and describes the distribution of light and dark in a work of art, particularly where there is a strong contrast between them.) Painters mixed and blended lighter and darker coloured oil paint, often applied in transparent layers, which allowed them to create a more naturalistic sense of depth of space, and a realistic modelling of faces, drapery and natural forms to give a three- Renaissance Impressions dimensional result. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci was seen as the Chiaroscuro woodcuts from the Collections of Georg pioneer of this technique. Chiaroscuro woodcuts developed because printmakers Baselitz and the Albertina, Vienna wanted to use woodblocks and ink to imitate the painterly effects of light and shadow in paintings. The method enabled printmakers to create subtle gradations of tone, which are used to suggest three-dimensional volume and depth. The works in this exhibition at the Royal Academy are some of the most important and valuable examples of chiaroscuro prints, from the collections of the The Sackler Wing of Galleries Albertina Museum in Vienna, and from the private collection of the German artist 15 March – 8 June 2014 Georg Baselitz. Renaissance Impressions provides a unique opportunity to see how the chiaroscuro woodcut technique developed; from its invention in Germany in the early 1500s to the varied ways that artists across Europe, particularly in Italy and the Netherlands, experimented with this new technology and created diverse imagery, with subjects ranging from the religious and mythological to portraits and landscapes. Cover: Cat. 18 (detail) Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros The chiaroscuro woodcut technique D e A chiaroscuro woodcut is printed from two or more woodblocks. A key, or line, block s i g n e carries the outlines of the design and gives some indication of shading through the d b y use of hatched lines. The tone, or colour, block is exactly the same size as the key I s a m block and is used to lay down a coloured background and the highlights. Woodblock b a r d printing is a relief process. Designs are carved into blocks made from relatively soft T h o fruitwoods, using knives and gouges. The areas to be printed are left raised. The key m a s , block is cut first, then printed onto the tone block as a guide for placing the L o n d o n P r i n t e The RA is a unique organisation that remains true to its origins in 1768 d b y T as a place where art is made, exhibited and debated. Our aim is simple: r a d e to be a clear, strong voice for art and artists. The RA’s Learning Department w i n d fulfils this objective by engaging people in the practice of art through hands-on s L t creative experiences and exploring the art of the past and the present. d 1 highlights and shadows. The tone block is then cut to create the separation of In this print, based on Dürer’s original drawing, the rhinoceros’s notoriously thick colours and the placing of contrasting areas of light and dark, from which the skin appears to have been transformed into a suit of armour. The white highlights technique takes its name. The highlights are cut away from the surface of the across the back and ribs and on the front shoulder make the rhinoceros’s hide look woodblock so they do not take up the ink. When the block is printed, these areas like burnished metal. The segmented body is covered with different patterns and remain blank, revealing the white of the paper as a highlight. A print may require textures, which look like animal skins we would recognise – patches, spots and several tone blocks, the making of which requires careful planning and great skill. scales – but this seems to have been done for decorative effect rather than Next, oil-based inks are dabbed onto the raised surfaces of the blocks. These accuracy. inks came in a wide range of colours and were usually made from mineral pigments. The rhinoceros’s head is the most naturalistically drawn, with dense, radiating Neutral or earth tones were the most commonly used, but some artists used bright lines that create deep areas of shadow between the wrinkles of the neck, and fine colours, sometimes in striking combinations. strokes that indicate whiskers under the chin and fur inside the ears. Dürer also It is important to understand that a chiaroscuro print is created in stages. The shows how the knobbly horn has grown, clearly drawing the overlapping layers of technique is very precise, because to provide a clear impression each block has to keratin. be lined up exactly. A tone block is printed first to place the highlights, the lightest The first edition of this woodcut was printed in black and white, but the image areas of the print. The inked block is placed onto a sheet of paper and then pressure became so popular that another eight editions were printed, including the dark green is applied using a screw-and-lever press (similar or identical to the type press chiaroscuro example seen here, which the Amsterdam publisher Willem Janssen invented by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany in the 1450s). The tone is then built printed in around 1620, using tone blocks. up in the print from light to dark, using one or more tone blocks. The colours are Cat. 18 usually closely related to one another, because the emphasis is on building up a Albrecht Dürer Look carefully at this print. Can you tell which areas were printed from or range of tonal values. Finally, the line block is printed, usually with black ink, providing Rhinoceros, defined by the first tone block? Which areas would have been printed last? 1515 and c. 1620 the outlines for the whole image. Chiaroscuro woodcut printed Why do you think Dürer’s print of the rhinoceros was so popular? from two blocks, the tone block in green How would such information about a rare or unusual animal be shared 21.1 x 29.9 cm today? Albertina, Vienna German prints before 1508 Photo Albertina, Vienna The origins of the chiaroscuro woodcut can be found in sixteenth-century Germany, ‘[The rhinoceros] has the but the beginnings of the technology required for colour printing and the demand for colour of a speckled tortoise and it is covered coloured woodcuts emerged in the last decades of the fifteenth century. Albrecht with thick scales.’ Dürer (1471–1528) was the first German artist to make a substantial income from Albrecht Dürer printmaking after setting up his workshop in Nuremberg in 1495. The quality of prints he produced dramatically raised the status of the medium in Germany, including this work, Rhinoceros. Cat. 18 This woodcut records the arrival of the first live rhinoceros to reach Europe since the third century AD. Dürer made a drawing, and later a woodcut, of this remarkable creature, which was a gift from the ruler of Gujarat, Sultan Muzafar, to the governor of Portuguese India, Alfonso d’Albuquerque. The rhinoceros was then sent to King Manuel I in Lisbon, where it arrived on 20 May 1515. Dürer never saw the animal himself, but reportedly based his drawing on a description in a newsletter and from sketches, which were sent to him in Nuremberg from Lisbon. Later on in the year, the King despatched the rhinoceros to Rome as a gift for Pope Leo X, but unfortunately it did not survive the journey – the ship carrying it sank, and the rhinoceros drowned. 2 3 Buying prints was a competitive pursuit, with each connoisseur wanting his collection Northern Germany. Cranach’s St George represents to be the most lavish and up-to-date. This was certainly the case for Maximilian of an important stage in the history of colour printing Austria, who became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1508. Like many rulers and, like chiaroscuro woodcuts, was printed using and leaders, Maximilian was extremely concerned with his legacy. He was unable to multiple blocks. In the version in the British Museum, effectively control his vast empire, but instead he decided he could shape how he the paper was prepared with a wash of indigo was remembered through celebratory woodcuts and prints. These images were sent pigment to provide the blue background. The wash out and displayed on the walls of council chambers and great halls across the was applied in horizontal bands, creating the effect Imperial territory. of a cloud-streaked sky. This suggests that Cranach Maximilian’s patronage acted as a powerful stimulus to professional was attempting to emulate a style of drawing done printmakers, especially in cities such as Nuremberg and Augsburg in Germany.